money, have eventually gone to their true value—zero. In 1970, 1,000 dollars would have bought approximately 28 ounces of gold. By March 2009, with gold at approximately $900 an ounce, those 28 ounces of gold could be sold for around $25,000—even after the largest stock market crash in history.
In 1924, John Maynard Keynes, who warned against the debauching of money, dismissed gold as a “barbarous relic.” Unfortunately, he did not realize how much the Federal Reserve and our government could debauch our currency once the rules of money were changed in 1971.
In 1952, the ratio of household debt to disposable income was less than 40 percent. In other words, if you had $1,000 after taxes, only $400 went to debt. By 2007, it was 133 percent